Tom Lehrer Quotes

It is in the uncomprisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma that the danger lies.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

I personally am not religious. I think, put into the wrong hands, it's incredibly dangerous. It's the reason for most of the wars that have been fought around the world, and it's pretty ridiculous when you think about what they're actually arguing over.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it's a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you're an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you're religious, there's a mystery left there.

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect - if you're a moderate on abortion, if you're a moderate on gun control, or if you're a moderate in your religious faith - it doesn't evolve into a crusade where you're either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do.

I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.

God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at times to agree willingly to become prisoners within our own minds and souls of beliefs and ideas on which we can never be flexible.

Those who believe that they have absolute truth and the only moral system are destructive both to themselves and to those whom they try to convert.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

My skepticism warns me of the danger of becoming a fanatic, a danger which no faith has yet averted.

I really don't want to offend anybody, but I find all forms of religious fundamentalism frightening.

The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

A mistake made by many people with great convictions is that they will let nothing stand in the way of their views, not even kindness.

You're always going to have extremists in every religion.

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.

I enjoy being Jewish, but I'm an atheist... I hate fundamentalism in all its forms. Jews, Catholics, Baptists, I think they are all potty and capable of destroying the world.

Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.

The fanatics should know that we hold our beliefs just as deeply as they hold theirs.

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.